Dr. Baker will meet with the Meyerholz community to discuss the future of Meyerholz as it relates to CLIP. This meeting will be videotaped and made available to the Meyerholz community following the meeting.

Please RSVP as seating is limited.

We will hold another community meeting on March 1st @ 7 PM with a focus on the Meyerholz Neighborhood program.

Both meetings are open to the entire Meyerholz community. You can access more information related to the balancing enrollment board priority on our website here.

The following is the letter from Dr. Baker which was emailed to the Meyerholz community on Sunday, 2/4/18:

Dear Meyerholz Community,

I am looking forward to meeting with you on February 8, 2018, at 7:00 pm in the Meyerholz GLC. In case you are unable to join us, please be aware that we will be recording the meeting and will post the video on the Meyerholz website the next day. Here is the agenda for this meeting:

Welcome

Norms

Context-Setting

Discussion of Process and Timeline

Framing Question: Regardless of where CLIP is situated today or in the future, what are the ways that the District can support CLIP in reaching its fullest potential?

Question and Answer Session

To help us be ready for the discussion, I want to take this opportunity to clarify the intent of the meeting and hopefully address some of the confusion that seems to exist in the community.

For good reason, there have been many questions and concerns circulating in the Meyerholz community as to whether CLIP might have its own school site as a way to help address one of the District’s stated priorities of balancing enrollment across the district. Please know that the original questions raised by a few CLIP parents about the possibility of having their own site was never directly tied to balancing enrollment; instead, it was connected to supporting the program itself and was a genuine expression of interest to simply discuss and explore the possibility of expansion. This question was a reasonable one to ask and certainly warrants consideration. And, because we are beginning the process of discussing possible solutions to district-wide enrollment issues, we need to know as soon as possible if this is something the CLIP community truly wants us to even consider as a possibility, so that we can make sure it is part of the mix when deliberating on the larger problem of balancing enrollment.

At this time, I want the community to know that the District neither has an immediate need nor a particular desire to move CLIP off the Meyerholz campus or to expand it. By the end of next school year (June of 2019), however, I would need to know whether the CLIP community even has the collective desire to occupy its own site, regardless of where that site might be, and only then would the District more seriously take up this question. With this timeline in mind, I hope that the entire CLIP community would discuss this, to include prospective parents, to ensure we have a variety of voices represented. I assume that in order to engage in this discourse in the most inclusive, thorough and deliberate manner, we need at least another year’s worth of discussion, perhaps even more. And, it would likely take several more years after that to prepare both CLIP and Meyerholz Neighborhood communities for any changes or improvements to facilities. All to say, this is going to be a long and engaging process, and we must keep in mind what is best for all members of the Meyerholz/CLIP communities, and for the entire District, for decades to come.

Finally, in order to facilitate Thursday’s conversation, I would like to invite you to send me your questions or ideas prior about what you hope I will cover at the meeting, or any question you’d prefer to ask now, rather than having to stand up in front of the group to ask it. By doing this, I will be certain to prioritize the most asked questions of the community. You can reach me at baker_craig@cusdk8.org.

I very much look forward to spending time with you on Thursday, February 8, starting at 7 pm, to hear your thoughts and suggestions, and engage in a productive conversation.